Firms causing packaging pollution accused of 'blatant greenwashing'

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Some 4,000 volunteers helping clean up the environment have collected litter along 13,000 miles of coasts, rivers, and green spaces, among many other places, over the past 12 months, which helped compile data for the annual report on packaging pollution by the charity Surfers Against Sewage.

Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Mcdonald's, alongside nine other companies and huge corporations, are the main contributors to packaging pollution, as their branded packaging was at the top of those that showed up at the spaces cleaned up by the volunteers.

"Year after year, our citizen science brand audit reveals the same huge companies are responsible for the packaging pollution choking our environment," Hugo Tagholm, chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage.

"Despite public sustainability commitments, these dirty brands are failing to take meaningful action to stop this harm," he said.

"We cannot stand for this blatant greenwashing any longer. Systemic change is urgently needed to end the pollution swamping the land and ocean," Tagholm added.

This would levy a charge that would be paid back to customers when they returned drinks containers for recycling.

The volunteers for the survey found 10,843 branded items in total, linked to 264 companies, with 28,727 items recorded overall, including both branded and unbranded items.

A stark ratio of items is comprised of tobacco products, as they made up around %15 of all trash found on beaches.

More than a quarter of the unbranded litter was cigarette butts, polluting soil and beaches with single-use plastic and toxic chemicals, the charity said.

A Coca-Cola spokesperson tried to salvage his company's reputation by saying: "We share the goal of eliminating plastic waste from the environment and acknowledge that The Coca-Cola Company has a responsibility to help solve this issue.

"That was the driving force in establishing our 'world without waste' goals, and while we continue to make progress against these targets, we are challenging ourselves to do more," the spokesperson added.

"Over 90% of the packaging we use comes from recycled or renewable sources and can be recycled," said a spokesperson for McDonald's in a similar attempt.

"As a business, we have committed to sourcing all of our packaging from renewable and recyclable materials by 2025."

A Greenpeace survey showed that nearly 100 billion pieces of plastic packaging are thrown away by UK households per year.

Only 12% of the single-use packaging used by households is recycled, as per the results of one of the biggest voluntary researches related to plastic waste.

Households counted their plastic waste for one week in May, as per the request of Greenpeace. Almost 250,000 individuals out of nearly 100,000 households participated and gave their results to Greenpeace and fellow NGO Everyday Plastic.

83% of plastic waste came from food and drink packaging, with the largest proportion being fruit and vegetable packaging.

Read more: 8 Million Tons of Pandemic Plastic Waste

A 2019-study found that the rapid increase of single-use plastic around the world is growing climate impacts and hastening the need to urgently stop it. A research by the Center for International Environmental Law found that almost all plastic is made from fossil fuels, and from its production to the refining and the way it is managed as a waste product, plastic leads to greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its lifecycle.